Player movement....

[thedevilsjester]

Let me start off by saying that I have played (and still play) many online RPGs from muds to full blown MMORPGs, and while Planeshift (so far) looks really good (and I applaud the efforts of the developers  ), the one thing it seriously lacks is decent movement.

The game feels more like a Resident Evil style game with its slow and tedious movement.  Most 3d rpgs use a very similar (to each other) style of movement, and there is a good reason for this, because it works.  Because it takes the tedium out of controling your character, allowing you to focus on the actual game content.  Just load up EQ1/2 or FFXI, or many others to get an example of a good movement system, where you can jump in and just play, not take hours just trying to figureout how to move your character without falling off ledges or running into walls.

After trying the movement for awhile, I had a bright idea! Maybe there are mouse movement controls like these other RPGs! Maybe that will take the pain out of movement, alas what I found out is that mouse movement is just as bad as the keyboard movement.  "Pathfinding"mouse movement on a game that has deadly cliffs and bridges to navigate often, is a BAD IDEA , and thats if it works right, since it doesnt (mainly camera issues), its even worse!  And to top it off, if you have a normal mouse (2-3 button), you cant have MOUSE movement on a mouse button, otherwise the other interaction buttons go arwy!

I am not without suggestions however.  Again looking at other mmorpgs, mouse movement should be very similar to keyboard movent you in the direction the camera is facing (hold the button, sprite runs in that direction)  Camera movement should be done via another mouse button (yes, you can have both camera movement AND context menus on the same button if done properly).

An auto run feature which, again, runs in the direction of the camera (you then use the keys or the mouse to change the camera direction, thus changing your movement direction)

And finally have the option to have the movement keys relative to the camera.

(And of course, fix that mouse look!)

Just a disclaimer, this isnt a rant so much as a "I really want to play this game, but the horrible movement prevents me from enjoying it" post...take from it what you will.

[steuben]

umm. it took you hours to figure out how to move without falling off of stuff? it took me only 15 min and that was back in mb when things were more interesting.

and ...

* steuben points to the dev app form.

it is there waiting for you.

[Iamthom]

yes I was wondering the same thing. Does the movement system actually trouble you THAT much? I have absolutely no problem with it. My only concern on cliffs and mountains is the lag. Sometimes im walking walking walking laaaaag and i find myself at the bottom and about to go to the DR.

Perhaps it is just the lag that is troubling you?

[Siofra]

I, for one, *do* find the mouse part of movement troublesome. Just being able to up the sensitivity more than is currently possible would help and awful lot... Dealing with it though..

* Siofra shrugs

[DaveG]

Hey, don't call us similar to Resident Evil!  That's just mean.  PS is certainly quite playable, whereas RE is not.

What's wrong with it, exactly?  (oh, and btw, you if you really wanted a messed up system, take a look at the code for the old one... ew)  The default is standard WADS, and you just... move.  It really can't be any simpler.  If you want things differently, just go into the options and change it.  Someone suggested adding more camera controls, and I'll probably do so for the next release.

Oh, and moving relative to the camera is a horrible idea.  That's prone to many problems, and it's much easier to just keep things consistient and under the control of the player.  Anything other than press forward to go forward is a mess.

WRT mouse buttons, there's a bug in CS where it's not picking up mouse+modifier combos right.  You should be able to set mouserun to something like ctrl+leftclick or something, but that's dead.  If they don't fix it at some point, I may end up hacking around it.

Oh, and if you really want to, you can set click to forward (or the secondary forward) to use it to move.  We don't have a full mouse movement system (where moving the mosue turns the player), but someone might be coaxed to write one at some point.  Though, I personally find things like this are just novelties.  WADS has been more than adequate, and most people either use it intuitively or can learn it rather quickly.  It's been the standard for quite a while for a reason.

Other than that, you just have a lot of vague pointing to other games without any real specifics.  Please don't post rants unless you have solutions to go with them.

[zorbels]

* zorbels chuckles

Oh the things people love to point out. When I play in planeshift I have set movment on my keyboard to the following keys ....

Upper arrow - Foward
Down arrow - backward
left and right arrow - Left and right movement
right shift - run
Right Ctrl - sneak
t - auto run
Mouse - I use to look around
Mouse scroll button - To zoom in and out
m - For different camera angles
right click - For clicking on NPC's and players

I am sure I forgot a bunch of keys but you get the idea. Never once have I had a problem with the movement with the system I have created for myself. Nor have I died from lag or auto running off of a cliff. I also use the camera angles (my m - for different camera angles) for appropriate situations. Normally I stay on third person view. Unless I want to spin myself into feeling sick, then I use first person view. Over all the controls for movement is better than most games and I haven't had to many problems with the set up. Especially since this game is far from being fully developed. This mouse look (Which I have never used) sounds like pure suicide if you are traveling in parts of the game that have a high volume of terrain.  Maybe you could try other ways to control your character?

[provisionist1]

I think the movement right now is pretty decent, and not really a priority issue for the devs. However, I  do think collision detection (sort-of related to movement in this case- yes, this post should be in the wish list, and I'm sure it has been) should be implemented on characters as soon as possible as it would add a very realistic, very interesting aspect to the game. For example, an evil guild/character could actually do something evil and block off a road or passage, and good guilds/characters would have a purpose, called upon to vanquish the evil characters. Or... npc rogues/monsters (like the one on the bridge in the mine of the Laanx Dungeon) would actually be functional guarding passage: to be able to access the lucrative resources beyond, one would have to be strong enough to kill the roadblock.

My thoughts,

Xirius

[Karyuu]

Check this Players as Physical Barriers thread from the Wishlist :} "As soon as possible" is just not an option at this stage.

[DaveG]

Summary:  Full CD == bad.  Being able to block your path sounds cool, but it's prone to problems and exploitation.  The correct solution is some form of partial CD, where models aren't allowed inside eachother and only nudge eachother out of the way.

[hook]

Summary:  Full CD == bad.  Being able to block your path sounds cool, but it's prone to problems and exploitation.  The correct solution is some form of partial CD, where models aren't allowed inside eachother and only nudge eachother out of the way.

I can already imagine mad dwarfs ...Imagine a kran tackling a dwarf - he'd push him around pretty easily, I imagine. ...I also imagine the dwarves wouldn't stand for it very long

[thedevilsjester]

I  didnt rant, and I did post viable solutions.  If you read my whole post, you will see them all.

The movement system is exactally like RE style games (Which is the worst possible movement type imagineable), and the mouse/camera doesnt even come close to working in any predictable manner.  And the button assigning is just...it needs work.  The idea to assign a movement combination to a keyboard key and a mouse button is just...not to insult the person who suggested it....stupid.  Why should we use TWO input devices for a simple action?

The movement as is is slow and tedious, "Move forward, rotate a little, move forward, rotate a little more, etc..." you pretty much have to come to a dead stop to turn any slightly sharp angle without falling off of the narrow walkways.

I explored PS awhile ago (about the time combat was being added) and really liked the feel and design of the game (although lots of missing models was a bummer ;p), but I stopped playing it the same day because of some nasty graphical error (ghosts of every object on the screen). 

Now, a good deal of time later, I try again, and the errors are gone, the models are still missing, and everything seems to be gearing up to be a good system, except movement.  I have played _MANY_ MMORPGs, and have never had a problem with movement, yet I cant stand the movement system in this engine,  its less of an annoyance if I have the camera always stay behind the sprite (less stopping to turn), but it could still use alot of work.

Some of you mentioned hating absolute movement (sprite relative to the camera), and thats ok that you dont like it, but it takes a few simple modifcations to allow for BOTH methods.  And the one claiming that anything other than forward goes forward is a mess, hasnt played many mmorpgs, I just got off of FFXI and EQ2, both of which use a "Forward moves you in the direction of the camera" method (just like the vast majority of mmorpgs) and they play just fine.  I have coded such systems myself without any of these imagined problems you mention.

In most MMORPGs, when I move my player, I have it set on auto run, and simply hold a mouse button and move the mouse, which moves the camera, which changes the direction my sprite is running.  Simple, effective, and would be a godsend to this engine.  I do like the idea of the "walk to" mouse movement idea, but it seems to be a bit flawed (I would have to play more to get an exact reason on this).

The biggest issue for me and movement is more of a mouse/camera issue, since I dont usally use the keyboard for anything other than chat.

In its defence, even with the subpar movement, the rest of the game/engine surpasses all free/opensource mmorpgs and many commercial ones, as far as I can tell so far.  It has great visuals, the area designs look really nice, the interfaces are nice also (except for the main buttons up top...and a big bulky font, but I can live with those), detailed gameplay features, and it runs great.

On a side note/question, is there anyway to get it to go to a proper 16:9/16:10 screen ratio? (1680x1050), I can set  that resolution, but it just stretches it from a 4:3

[DaveG]

I'm sorry, calling it like RE is just insulting.  (and no, I'm not being sarcastic... that's just mean; RE is the only game I ever rented and returned right away because the controls were simply unplayable)  I think the problem is you're expecting fancy mouse stuff, and you just don't like the standard keyboard system which everyone has used for quite a while.  The "Move forward, rotate a little, move forward, rotate a little more, etc..." thing makes no sense to me, as that's not the case.  Anyone used to WADS can run circles around with no prior learning.  (many gamers out there instinctively put their hands on a keyboard with their fingers on shift, A, W, and D, rather than the home row )  Myself and everyone else I've heard from considers it quite fine.  We just don't have the fancy mouse stuff yet.  Feel free to write it for us.

Why in the world would setting a keyboard modifier + mouse button combo be stupid?  (not that it works at the moment for all of the controls; CS bug)  Though, I guess it makes sense if you don't actually use your keyboard much, which seems to be the case.

Now, if you were using first-person with our stock WADS, yeah, that might be weird.  Most people who do that turn on mouselook and move with WADS (probably swapping turns for strafes) and use the mouse to turn.  Personally, I don't know how anyone could really play PS without one of the third-person views on.  You don't get a good enough view of the area otherwise.

WRT ratio, the camera should work fine-ish at other ratios.  It's just the GUI that goes wonky.  We just don't have anything to detect and position correctly for them.

[thedevilsjester]

I completely agree with you about RE, its a game I hate, and the only reason being the movement.  And not to be insultive but I dont honestly see a difference between the RE and PS movement (default settings), they are pretty close, and it would be very simple to add the camera based movement as I suggested (as an optional movement method), with that, and a better camera movement (and the ability to have a mouse button assigned to move the camera AND interact with objects, simple, if the mouse is not over an object when clicked, it acts as a camera control, if it is over an object, it does the standard object interaction, cant be but a few lines of code to achive), I would have no real complaints.

As for WASD, not only do I not use my keyboard for gaming (its for typing) but the positioning of WASD on a natural style keyboard does not make for good movement of any sort. they are not aligned like standard arrow keys, they are at an angle and staggered for best ergonomics, so the best (and easiest by far) method of movement comes from using the mouse, yet its fatally flawed.

As for detecting the ratio, its really pretty simple, you can detect the screen resolution and simply do the math to see what ratio the width is compared to the height.  I understand it would be difficult to draw copies of all the 2d artwork (loading screens etc...) for all possible ratios, but a centered, (possibly bordered), 2d image is much better than seeing fat faces and such.

[Santiago]

I must admit I never liked PS movement much either. Strafing particularly frustrated me, due do its slow speed. I think movement mainly felt cumbersome because the sensitivity of the mouse, when used for controlling direction and looking around, was too low to be used. I remember trying to adjust sensitivity settings myself, but I don't recall ever having any success. I remember also certain keypresses (strafing+moving) would cancel eachother out and stop you dead in your tracks, which was frustrating. But maybe that has been fixed since.

Apart from mouse sensitivity, other keys can be reassigned in the Options menu, so that shouldn't pose a problem. If WSAD does not suit you, simply change it to something that works for your keyboard layout.

[hook]

I like the strafing in PS ...it could be a bit faster though.

As for movement ...I like it. I never liked that (e.g.) FF-type of movement though where you couldn't go everywhere - I mean if I see a path, why shouldn't I be able to take it? Why must I just use the paths that are predefined. If I see a clif, I'm just careful not to jump off it if I don't want to. And as far as the click-on-floor-wait-for-char-to-move-there type is simple to use, I think that the first-person WASD/arrows/whatever_your_setting gives you a closer/tighter interaction with your character's movement. And autorun is just practical

As for the natural keyboard: It's not the fault of any dev that WASD feels odd on it ...just as it's not if you use AZERTY or a Dvorak layout

As far as I understood you about that camera-bound movement - it's already in in a indirect way. In "third person follow" and "first person" (maybe in some others too) when you move your camera (e.g. moving your mouse while holding the middle button).

p.s. I didn't know "natural" keyboards are good for any gaming ...hell, I don't even like to type on them o_O